


A Simple Job

by devera



Category: Saiyuki Gaiden
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternate Universe - Yakuza, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-15 01:30:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1286146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devera/pseuds/devera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Break, enter, deliver a message. Why do the simple jobs never go as planned when you're working for the mob?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Simple Job

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the [saiyuki_wk_au](http://saiyuki-wk-au.livejournal.com/39691.html) prompt _Yakuza enforcer Gojyo is assigned to shake down powerful, wealthy businessman/politician Hakkai, who has been breaking promises to former yakuza allies. Gojyo quickly finds himself out of his depth._
> 
> This is, rather than what the prompter asked for, instead a semi-weird Gaiden AU (including a brief appearance by the some of the Ants). I say weird due to the fact that I chose to crossover Saiyuki backstory with Gaiden characters for some reason. I could have changed it reposting it here, but I figured it's good to leave it as is, to remind myself not all experiments work out.

When they wanted heads cracked and knees broken, they didn’t call Kenren. They had muscle for that, unsubtle but highly effective with the right audience. When they wanted someone killed, well they had people for that too. This time, though, there was a little more to it; not a hit or a warning so much as a very delicate reminder, and they were paying big. Kenren made it a point of doing his research - thoroughly - when the were paying big. Painful experience had taught him it was always, _always_ a good idea.

So, he knew the basics - the layout of the grounds and the house, knew where security was and how long the patrols took and how many of them had dogs (two). He knew which points of entry had surveillance (seven) and how long it would take the police Rapid Response Unit to get to the house after the cameras and the alarms had been cut (nine minutes, which was longer than it could have been but still cutting it a little short for Kenren's taste). He also knew that on a four storey mansion in the middle of virtually nowhere, with all security focused on the ground, no one was watching the roof, which was why he paraglided in from a light plane drop, landed silently on the roof (not an easy thing to do, but having the right gear helped), spent an hour carefully laser cutting the seals on the skylight in the private, west wing of the house and lowered himself down the lightwell, neatly bypassing all the external security without anyone being the wiser.

Of course, that was just the easy stuff. What he’d also learned in his pre-job planning was that this wasn’t just any target. The Group had been strangely cautious in their instruction – they wanted this guy scared but not hurt, and they definitely did not want any connections to them beyond the message that Kenren was supposed to deliver, ergo the reason they were using Kenren in the first place. It was a lot of money for a half a dozen words or so, good enough reason for Kenren to be as paranoid about this job as it was possible to be.

On the surface, the job had looked relatively simple; a rich guy who’d maybe gotten that way through a few shady connections that the Group was finally demanding reciprocation on. Marshall Tenpou lived alone, and quietly, and in fairly tasteful comfort Kenren noted as he dropped silently into the fourth floor hallway and crouched for a moment in the darkness to make sure he hadn’t in fact been detected. There was a lot of money here; he could practically smell it, and his research hinted at old family money although there didn’t seem to be any family left. Grandparents on both sides deceased, father killed in the war, mother lost in a vehicular accident in ‘86. No spouse, no dependents. Twin sister committed suicide in ‘92. Some mention of a scandal that Kenren couldn’t get any names or details for no matter how hard he dug, so not just wealthy but powerful.

Friends in high places? Kenren thought it highly likely. Enough reports had Tenpou in the company of a very elite group of old school politicos, in particular an ex-Defence Force Admiral now major Front Bencher MP who was single-handedly responsible for the greatest military strategies of the last five decades and not a few major Bills recently in parliament. All indications from the political gossip mags and a few insiders Kenren did tours of service with back in the day was that Mister Front Bencher and Tenpou were closer than just business associates. The sources had been a bit iffy on how close, but since Tenpou had no record of military service anywhere, let alone under Admiral Goujuun, the MP was certainly either an old friend of the family or a mentor of some kind. What else he might have been, Kenren wasn't game to guess, but the information had been filed away in the back of his head with anything else that might prove useful.

The likelihood that Tenpou hadn't done service was also supported in the decor. Kenren hadn't known a single military man who would have this kind of taste, and he'd _been_ a military man, so he'd known a few. Glass cabinets lined the hall, populated with curios that ranged from what looked like worthless crap to antiquities that were, Kenren would have guessed, probably priceless, and as he ghosted down the hall towards what he remembered from the floor plan was the main bedroom, he couldn't help but stop and stare for a couple of seconds. This shit wasn’t just the kind of stuff a rich guys put in their houses to impress people, and even if it had been, it wouldn’t have been on the fourth floor in what was clearly a private section of the house. But it was... weird, random. There was no clear pattern to it. A plain, battered cardboard sleeve holding a pressing of Sidney Bechet's _Wild Cat Blues_ was propped up alongside the kind of cheap plastic cartoon figurine you could buy in any convenience store - in fact, Kenren was pretty sure he'd seen that Tiger  & Bunny half age character in his local Family Mart just this week.

It almost made Kenren snort out loud. His research really hadn't mentioned Tenpou was particularly eccentric, but he supposed people got up to all sorts of things in privacy. Lucky the place was about as easy as Fort Knox to get into, or the next dumb burglar to come along probably would hurt something trying to work out what to take and what to leave.

The image amused Kenren as he slid up to the closed main bedroom door at the end of the hall. He didn't anticipate it being locked, although he had bought his just-in-case kit. No one, no matter how rich, corrupt or paranoid, locked their own bedroom door, not in a place with security staff patrolling the grounds, state of the art security cameras and biometric locks on the gates. Kenren put his hand on the door handle and leaned in, waiting, listening for any signs that the room's occupant was anything other than asleep. Not a peep. He turned the handle, slowly and using both hands to control the latch, before easing the door open first a crack and then wide enough for him to slip inside and close the door just as quietly behind him.

The room was silent and sparsely furnished. On the opposite side of the room, moonlight poured through the fourth level balcony doors (alarmed, of course), making it seem almost day in comparison to the dark hallway outside. The only thing between him and his target was a large expanse of floor and a massive King bed in which Tenpou seemed to be sleeping dead centre. Kenren took it slow and careful; this was the tricky part. If Tenpou was a light sleeper, if he woke just because he sensed a presence in the room as Kenren had known some people to do, and had a chance to reach for anything at all - security alarm, a gun - this could turn bad very quickly. Kenren didn't like bad. It usually meant he didn't get paid, and it often meant he had to make himself scarce for a while. Sometimes it even meant a visit to an unregistered member of the health care profession. Kenren hated enforced holidays in remote seaside locations almost as much as leaving DNA evidence all around while he tried to get his wounded ass out of the immediate job area, so as far as he was concerned either eventuality was to be avoided at all costs.

But Tenpou didn't wake as Kenren kept closer. Kenren judged his distances, felt his muscles tense in preparation for action, took a silent, slow breath and then went for it, vaulting himself onto the bed and scrambling over onto Tenpou to bring his weight down to bear on the man, one hand on his throat and the other over his mouth and nose. Tenpou had come awake the second Kenren hit the bed, and reacted the way anyone would have at the sudden unexpected wake-up call - in panic. By the time he realised someone was cutting off his air (a good two and a half seconds later), his hands were both around Kenren's wrists, which was a nice try and but ultimately pointless; it would have taken a gorilla to budge Kenren at this point.

Tenpou was not a gorilla, but he was smart. As soon as he realised what his situation was, he stopped kicking and his hands dropped from Kenren's wrists in defeat. But the look he was giving Kenren was all defiance, and Kenren had no doubt that if he gave this guy half the opportunity he'd have a real fight on his hands.

The idea of wrestling around with this guy in his big bed wasn't exactly a turn off in the privacy of Kenren's head - one of the other things he'd noticed doing his pre-planning was that Marshall Tenpou wasn't exactly bad looking - but of course that was only if Tenpou wasn't trying to kill him, so he just sat on the guy and waited for that glare to get muscled out by the start of genuine physical distress, which all in all didn't take that long.

"Got a message for you," Kenren husked, leaning down and feeling Tenpou jerk involuntarily underneath him, desperately trying to drag in air that just wasn't available to him. His hands were pawing at Kenren again, with less strength and coordination than before. "They want you to know they can get to you anywhere, anytime. So when they ask, you say yes. Or the next visit won’t be from someone as nice as me. Got it?"

Tenpou was busy trying to breathe, but Kenren needed him to focus, so he let up the pressure a little and gave him a bit of a shake, and when he had his undivided attention again, he leaned closer.

"Got it, Ten-chan?"

Tenpou nodded, a slight movement under Kenren's hand. Kenren smiled in reward.

"Good boy," he told him. "Now, sorry to do this to you, but I can't exactly have you raising the alarm before I make myself scarce, can I? Nice to meet you th-"

Tenpou, almost rag-doll limp underneath him, suddenly moved. Kenren almost didn't know what hit him. Certainly he hadn't expected Tenpou to be that strong, or that flexible. One minute Kenren had Tenpou where he wanted him, the next, one of Tenpou's legs was somehow hooked around Kenren's shoulder. There was a wrenching pain as Tenpou tried to bring his leg down again and turn Kenren into a pretzel, and Kenren let out a shocked yelp and let Tenpou go, his body's involuntary desire to free itself overriding his reflexes. Kenren tumbled off to the side and just as suddenly, Tenpou was on him, a strong, wiry tangle of limbs, his momentum sending them both rolling off the edge of the bed to the floor.

Confusion reigned for a long, panicked moment as what amounted to a scrabbling bitch-fight ensued, and Tenpou didn't have Kenren's strength but he was a faster, better fighter and a glancing punch to the cheek dazed Kenren long enough for Tenpou to twist him over and down, face-first into the carpet with his arm being twisted with excruciating precision up behind his back. Tenpou's weight was all over him, hot and heavy, and his breath was coming harsh against the back of Kenren's neck when Kenren finally stopped struggling out of sheer lack of leverage.

"Nice to meet you too," Tenpou panted after a second, twisting Kenren's arm just that tiny bit more. "What did you say your name was?"

"Didn't," Kenren gasped. "But if you're asking, it's fuck you get it over with now."

"Get it over with?" Tenpou repeated, but he didn't sound like he didn't know what Kenren was telling him. "Oh, I very much don't like to be rushed."

There was a hand in Kenren's hair, painfully tight, that pulled his head back and up and Kenren knew exactly what was coming.

Face, floor, blinding fucking agony. Lights out.

++++

Kenren woke up, his face a pounding flare of agony. It was all he knew for a moment while he tried to breathe through it. Maybe his nose was broken. Hard to tell without a mirror and - oh, hands, which seemed to be tied to... Right. A chair. He was tied to a chair. Well, as long as he upright and not choking on his own blood he supposed things could be worse.

"Well, you're finally awake I see."

Familiar enough voice. Kenren hadn't been hit so hard that he didn't remember what had happened or who that was.

"Probably wishing you weren't?"

"Depends," he croaked, and forced one eye open to find Tenpou sitting on the side of his bed, in his pajamas and a robe left undone, smoking a cigarette and regarding Kenren calmly. "How badly is my nose broken? Because if you've messed up this pretty face, I think I'd rather you just kill me now."

Tenpou seemed a little amused at that; at least, his mouth thinned on one side in something that was possibly supposed to be a smile.

"Oh, I don't think you have to worry about that," he told him in a generous tone of voice. "You're still quite attractive. I dare say it feels worse than it is."

"Awesome," Kenren muttered, feeling anything but. He was quickly reassessing the idea that Tenpou hadn't been in the military; the knots on the ropes around his wrists felt by-the-book in a way that non-military personal never could seem to manage. Needless to say, Kenren would have to break the chair to get free and considering the damn thing was thick, solid oak, that wasn't happening any time soon. "I gotta say, Mister Tenpou, this isn't exactly the venue I expected for the inevitable tell-me-everything-you-know session. Are you sure you're doing this right?"

Tenpou actually did laugh at that, a short snort of amusement.

"Please," he said primly. "Torture is barbaric, ineffectual and it would ruin my rug. Besides, my interrogation rooms are in my other mansion."

"Well," Kenren said. "That's a relief. Care to fill me in on why I'm tied to a chair then?"

Tenpou smiled that thin smile again. "Let's just say it's my way of making you feel welcome. I have a few questions. You're going to answer them."

Kenren watched him. There wasn't an ounce of doubt in him about that fact, and suddenly Kenren realised why. If he talked, the Group would make it their second priority to hunt him down and kill him right after Tenpou. He didn't talk, the Group would assume he had and it would be: Refer to Point A.

"Okay," he agreed, without much further thought. "What do you want to know? I'm a Water Tiger, and I like wine, jazz music, and walks on the beach."

"Well," Tenpou said lightly. "There's something we have in common at any rate." He didn't say which it was though. "But perhaps we can discuss your likes and dislikes later. What I actually want to know is who in the Organisation sent you."

Kenren would have expected a 'why', but clearly Tenpou already knew that part.

"Honestly?" Kenren said. "The job came through the usual anonymous contact channels. But the money was big. Like, really big. I'd say for a simple messenger job, it was probably a little too big. My guess? It's someone real high who wants it kept real quiet. That ringing any bells for you?"

The expression on Tenpou's face said that it was, but all he said was, "Well then."

"That's pretty much all I know," Kenren concluded, trying to shrug with his arms secured and really only ending up grimacing. "I don't do hits. Everyone knows that. So maybe whoever it is doesn't actually want you dead?"

The smile Tenpou gave him this time was definitely not meant to display amusement this time. "Oh, I doubt that."

"My advice, pal?" Kenren told him sagely. "Don't mess with the Group. Because I've seen them work before, and whoever you are and whatever you have on them, they're not going to stop until they get what they want."

Tenpou took a final drag on his cigarette and leaned over to stub the butt out in, wow, the ugliest ashtray Kenren had ever seen, giving him a mild look as he let the smoke ease out between his lips.

"I'm quite aware, thank you," he said, seemingly without much concern. Then he reached over and picked up his mobile phone, flipped it open as he got smoothly to his feet - and if Kenren had seeb the guy move before this job, he would have rethought a few of his strategic choices - and came over to stand in front of Kenren.

"Hey," Kenren said, when he realised he was staring straight at the phone's camera and that Tenpou was taking his picture. "Hey, man, they're not going to pay anything to have me back. Seriously." They might pay to have him gone, though.

"Oh, I know," Tenpou said, and the flash went off in Kenren's face with the artifical click-whir of the camera shutter. "Stay right here. I'll be back in a moment."

Kenren opened his mouth to object, but by then Tenpou was walking past him. He heard the door open and close and Tenpou's soft footfalls on the landing, and thought that was probably the sound of Kenren being pretty much fucked.

++++

The door opened again - it couldn't have been much more than twenty minutes later - and Tenpou was back. This time he had a cordless phone in his hand, which he put to Kenren's ear with something like a gleam in his eye.

Kenren looked at him warily. "Uh, hello?" he said carefully into the mouthpiece.

"Kenren!" a familiar and totally unexpected voice said down the line, and something cold seemed to pass through almost every cell in Kenren's body. "What? You're too big to call me yourself these days? Gotta get some lackey to do it for you?"

Jesus. Jesus fuck. The bastard had called his brother.

"Yeah, sorry, Jien," Kenren said, trying to recover before Jien heard anything in his voice. "I'm kind of tied up at the moment. How're you doing?"

"How am I doing? _How am I doing_?" Jien began incredulously. "Kenren, you retard, you're having mum transferred to the best facility in the country and you want to know how I'm _doing_?! Jesus! I'm _fantastic_! But how are you affording all this? How did you get her pushed up the waiting list? I mean- Oh my God. I don't want to know, do I?"

Kenren teetered between stark disbelief and a kind of joy he wasn't sure he'd ever known. Jien sounded so happy.

"Yeah, no, probably not," Kenren admitted. "Look, I gotta go. I just wanted you to know that everything's okay, yeah? And I love you."

"Kenren?" Jien said, suddenly wary. "Why are you-" Of course, Jien was far from stupid so he started getting a pretty accurate picture even without any of the details. "You'd better not be in trouble, Kenren, or I will tan your hide the next time I see you, swear to God."

"No, it's all good," Kenren assured quickly. "No trouble whatsoever. Come on. You know me, right?"

"That's what I'm worried about," Jien returned. "But okay. Say ciao to that nice friend of yours, yeah? And take care, idiot."

"Yeah, okay, Jien. Will do. Catch ya, asshole."

Tenpou took the phone away from his ear and then hung up and tossed the handset onto his bed. Kenren glared at him.

"Mother-fucker," he grunted. "Do _not_ bring my family into this. Jesus, how did you even get onto them that fast?! Who the fuck _are_ you?"

"Your brother - or should I say, half brother - seems nice," Tenpou began conversationally, completely ignoring Kenren's ineffectual fury. "Looking after your sick mother as well as studying and working part time can't be easy for him. I can see why you'd want to send money home. How I got onto them - I merely sent your photo to a friend of mine, who accessed a very state of the art facial recognition database, which returned your details, including your familial connections and your half-brother's last known address. As to who I am, well, I think you've probably had time enough to come to some conclusions, am I right?"

Well, he wasn't wrong, that was for sure. Tenpou was someone, someone big. Probably, Kenren thought, someone in the Group. This was an internal power struggle, and Kenren had walked right into the middle of it. He was lucky he was still alive, possibly a state that wasn't going to last for much longer.

"Christ," he husked, because this was worse than anything Tenpou could have done to him physically. If Jien got dragged into this... "What do you want? You got it. Anything. Just leave them alone."

"Oh, I'm not going to hurt them," Tenpou promised. "Jien was extremely pleasant to me, and very protective of you, so he was pleased to know that you were in fact quite well. You see, Kenren, I don't want to hurt you. In fact, what I'd actually like is to offer you a job."

It took about four full seconds to parse that, and then Kenren started laughing. Tenpou waited patiently, still seemingly very amused by the whole thing, until Kenren got himself under control again.

"This is," he gasped, "this is the weirdest job interview I've ever had."

"I don't doubt it," Tenpou agreed, and came in closer, his knee brushing Kenren's thigh as he leaned past him and began tugging at the ropes tying Kenren to the chair and suddenly, laughing was the last thing Kenren felt like doing. "Let's call it a try-out instead. I thought my household security was the best. Clearly I was a little over-confident."

One of Kenren's wrists came loose of the ropes. He left it where it was while Tenpou moved around him to work on the other side, aware of his options at this point and remembering his brother's voice, the lack of noise in the background telling him that Tenpou had called him on the home phone.

"Well, to be fair, no, your security is pretty good," he offered. "But roof access wasn't the only thing you missed."

The other rope came free and Tenpou backed away, an eyebrow raised.

"Oh?" he intoned.

"Yeah," Kenren said, bringing his arms forward and rubbing at his wrists to restore the circulation. "Gimme your phone. No, the cell."

Curiosity lighting his eyes, Tenpou calmly retrieved his cell and handed it over. From his seat, Kenren flipped it open, scanned through the contacts list and selected one, then hit Call. The handset on the bed started ringing, but Tenpou didn't make a move to answer it, but on the third ring it picked up anyway.

“Sir?” came unfamiliar male voice. “Sir, why are you calling from- Is everything all right? Sir?!”

Kenren hung up and waited.

Predictably, not a minute later, there were boots - a lot of them - on the fourth level stairs, and then the door behind him banged open and Kenren watched Tenpou's face as his men flooded into the room.

"Sir! What- Who is-"

"Hey! How the hell did he-?!"

"Boss! Are you all right, Boss?!"

Tenpou made a quelling gesture and the hubbub died down.

"So," Kenren said calmly. "That's probably all of them except for the two at the gate, right?"

Tenpou looked at the men behind Kenren, all of whom were likely pointing their guns right at the back of Kenren's head. It made his skin crawl but he forced himself to keep still. One unexpected move at this point and one of those guppies would likely shoot him by accident.

"Rikuou," Tenpou said. "Where are Yuuan and Ensei?"

"If they know what's good for them," the man Tenpou has addressed as Rikuou said darkly, "they're where I stationed them. At the god damn _gate_." No doubt that last was for Kenren's benefit.

"Very good," Tenpou said. "That will be all. Please return to your stations."

There was the distinct sound of no-one leaving the room.

"Uh, Sir," Rikuou began carefully after a moment's tense silence. "Do you need us to-"

"Oh my God," someone else huffed. "Just say it, Rik! No offense, Boss, but what the fuck is going _on_ and who the fuck is _this_?"

Tenpou looked amused again, as he glanced back down at Kenren.

"Gentlemen," Tenpou announced. "I'd like you to meet my new head of security, Kenren."

In the following silence, Kenren raised a hand to the audience behind him in a casual wave.

"Yo," he said.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” someone muttered, and Tenpou smiled at him, a proper smile this time, that reached all the way to his eyes and somehow made Kenren grin back.

Well, he figured, there were probably worse ways of being recruited and maybe being in this little army under this crazy, unconventional man wouldn’t be so bad after all. Except for the part where Tenpou clearly intended on starting a war with the Group, but Kenren would worry about that later, when the feeling had returned to his fingers and the swelling in his face had gone down and maybe after he’d had a good stiff drink.

“So, guys,” Kenren began to the room in general. “Does he tie all his applicants up in his bedroom on first round or am I through to the finals?”

Not a few of them snorted like they were trying not to laugh out loud, maybe at the look on Tenpou’s face, part surprised and part, Kenren thought, something else, something hot and a little sharp that made Kenren’s heart kick in his chest.

“No, man,” Rik said over the hum of slightly increased muffled laughter. “Just you, apparently.”

“Good to know,” Kenren murmured back, holding Tenpou’s look with one of his own and smiling his own secretive smile. “In that case, I think we’re going to get along just fine.”

“All right, that’s enough,” Tenpou huffed. “Interviews are done. Everyone, back to work.”

There was a chorus of ‘yes sirs’, much more at ease than when the troops had arrived, and Kenren liked the sound of it, liked that Tenpou’s men obviously didn’t just acknowledge him as their boss, but actually liked him too.

Yeah, he thought, they were going to get along just fine indeed.  



End file.
